July 10, 2008

To treat my case of eye snot, Doctor Doctor prescribed eye drops, which have to be put in my eyes at regular intervals several times per day. Eye drops? No big deal, right?

Maybe it’s no big deal for most peeps, but I am a big baby when it comes to putting eye drops into my eyes. In fact, I get freaky when anyone puts anything near my eyes, which is why I cannot even comfortably think about wearing contact lenses, much less actually wear them.

”Yo, Jimbo. Here are two foreign objects. Just plaster one of them on each of your eyeballs and rock on.”

No farookin’ way!

I also get the heebie jeebies every time I see women applying eye liner by sticking a pencil point right next to her eyeballs. A farookin’ pencil in the eye!!! Yeef!

Anyway, back to eye drops.

Being the big baby that I am, I typically ask Mrs. Parkway to put the drops in my eyes (“You have to OPEN your damned eye, Jim!”), but given the frequency of application, I am largely left to my own devices this time around.

At first, I tried putting the drops in while standing in front of the bathroom mirror and pulling the skin around the bottom of my eyes down (the ophthalmologist does it this way). No dice. I ended up with eye drops everywhere but in my eyes, including on my shirt. It immediately became very clear that tipping one’s head back was a requisite for any chance I might have in getting that stuff into my eyes. I tried the stand-up, head-tilted-back technique, which resulted in some improvement, meaning that it might take four drops to get one drop in my eye.

Turns out that the only way I can get the damned drops into my eyes with something resembling accuracy is to sit in my office chair (at work or at home) and tilt the seat all the way back (almost as if I were in a modern dentist’s chair). Then, bracing my hand against my cheekbone, I put the cursed tip of the little bottle as close to my open eye as I can stand it, reminding myself not to blink. I’m certain that if I touch my eye with the damned thing I’ll pass right the hell out, which is another good reason to be in a chair.

That technique, which is doubtless comical to watch, has me batting above 500, but I still manage to blink when I shouldn’t, leading to drops landing on my eyelid and down my face.

I still have three more days of this to go. Fortunately, Doctor Doctor prescribed enough of the stuff to permit me to dispense mass quantities of the medicine seemingly everywhere except to my eye balls.

Yep. Definitely a big baby when it comes to eye drops.

Truth is, it’s not just eyes and eye drops about which I am a big baby, but we won’t be discussing the time many, many years ago when a doctor prescribed suppositories.